The Complete Drive-In

2

“It’s okay,” I heard Reba say, and I could feel her stroke my hair.

I awoke to find she wasn’t there. There was only me and the pontoon, and it was a breeze moving my hair, not Reba’s soft fingers. The moon was gone, and the sun was warm but not too warm, and the water was a bright sheening blue. Beyond, there was a great cloud bank, and in little patches, like glimpses of car metal as seen through clouds of white dust in a dirt-track race, I could see the great silver bridge.

I thought of Reba again, bright eyes, fine face, skin made hard from life, her navel like the end twist on a gut-stuffed sausage, the tangle of hair between her legs.

I thought: That’s about right. Here I am floating on what is essentially a goddamn log. I’ve lost all my friends, and my lover, and what I’m thinking about is not her sweetness, and kindness, but the fine wet thing between her thighs.

Men. They ain’t worth killing.

And I be one of them.

As I clung to the pontoon, I was thinking: This might be my chance. Just to let go. Just to drift down, the way poor Reba had. Drift down into the great deeps and fill my lungs with water, and end it all.

Wasn’t drowning supposed to be pleasant?

Or did I read it was actually very unpleasant, and the idea that it was pleasant was a myth? Which was it?

Just the thought of unpleasantness was enough to make me dismiss the idea. It was never anything I was in love with anyway.

“Jack,” a voice called.

I thought: Here I go again.

But this wasn’t Reba calling.

It was a man’s voice. Sounded like Steve.

Then came Grace’s voice calling my name.

I rolled my head to the other side, and out there on the water, floating up and down, were two heads and a body. The body was between the two heads, and they were hanging onto it. It was not floating very well, and I slowly deduced it was Homer, face down. On one side of him was Grace, on the other, Steve.

I tried to yell at them, but my voice came out in a bark. I realized then that the rushing water had gone into my throat and filled my belly and caused me to throw it up at some point, scalding my throat with stomach acid.

“We’ll come to you,” Grace said, and they let go of Homer and swam to the pontoon. Homer’s body floated lower in the water, so there was really little to nothing left of him to see.

They gripped the pontoon at the front and back. I continued to straddle and clutch the pontoon like a spider on a stick; I began to cry.

“You’re okay,” I said.

“More or less,” Grace said.

She was at the end where my head was, and I lifted my eyes and looked at her. It was really the first time I had ever seen her look the worse for wear.

There was fish shit in her matted hair. Her face looked haggard. Her flesh was waterlogged, her lips were purple. There were patches on her face where the fish’s stomach acid had burned her; red spots like flung paint. The look in her eye, for the first time, appeared distant, that hundred-yard stare. She too had finally felt the bite of fear.

But, it was still a beautiful face to me.

She said, “Reba?”

I shook my head.

Steve reached out and patted me on the foot, said, “Can we all share this thing a little better?”

So, the three of us, one at either end of the busted pontoon, one in the middle, shifted positions throughout the gnawing hot day to prevent boredom, floated about on what by late afternoon looked like a wine-dark sea.

I noted that the skin on my arms was burned, and I could feel it on the back of my neck, and on my face as well, and I knew soon I would burn even more, and by tonight, or early the next day, I would feel it and not like it.

Grace and Steve were burned as well.

I was thinking about all this, when I saw something that made me croak out. I could hardly make the word.

“Lund.”

“What?” Grace said.

I cleared my throat.

“Land.”

And so it was. There was a dark line of greenery and a fine line of brown shore, and way beyond it we could see the dark bridge, or ladder, rising up into the fluffy white clouds. We kicked our legs and tried to work the pontoon in that direction.

We paddled all day, and finally night fell, and we didn’t look any closer to me than when we had first spotted the shore.

We paddled throughout the night, one taking turns straddling the pontoon, sleeping a bit, then swapping out to let another do the same. The mist came back and surrounded us all night, and it was hard to see the land there in the dark, even with the moonlight (and tonight there were two moons), and on we paddled, like angry beavers, and when daybreak broke, we were still some distance away.

The current was carrying us toward the shore rapidly now, and so we merely clung for a long time, resting.

When land seemed truly within our grasp, we began to paddle again, and it was just growing dark when we made the white sandy beach, abandoned the pontoon, and crawled up on shore to rest.

We didn’t make it any farther than that, and I awoke to the water lifting and tugging at me, realized if I didn’t get up and move, that it would take me out to sea.

The mist was floating about again, but I didn’t even look at it. I shook Steve and Grace, and the three of us staggered farther inland, found a spot beneath a tree with limbs hanging so low and thick they almost touched the ground.

We crawled under them and lay near the tree’s thick trunk. It was good and dark under there, and there was plenty of room, and the sand was soft and warm. We couldn’t see the mist. There was only the sound of the sea crashing against the shore, and a smell of healthy greenery.

Almost immediately, we were asleep.